WORLD DATELINES

Compiled from Examiner wire reports

Published 4:00 am, Monday, November 6, 1995

AH: Italy's ex-premier indicted in murder Rome Giulio Andreotti, the seven-time former premier of Italy who is already on trial for alleged ties to the Mafia, has been indicted in the 1979 murder of a journalist.

A judge in Perugia on Sunday indicted Andreotti in the murder of Mino Pecorelli, editor of a political scandal sheet.

Prosecutors allege Pecorelli was shot in his car in Rome - a killing allegedly performed by the Mafia on Andreotti's behalf - because Pecorelli possessed compromising secrets about the politician.

Andreotti, 76, denies any part in the Pecorelli killing or any association with the Mafia, saying the cases are the result of political vendettas. He says Mafia turncoats who have provided key testimony against him are seeking revenge for his tough anti-Mafia measures while in government.

Viet-U.S. dissidents

gain early release Hanoi Two Vietnamese Americans jailed for promoting democracy in their homeland enjoyed their first full day of freedom Monday in Thailand and said their political views have not changed.

"I will do all I can to make my country free," Nguyen Tan Tri said from his Bangkok hotel, where he and Tran Quang Liem were resting after more than two years in Vietnamese prisons. They planned to fly to the United States on Tuesday.

Tri, 50, a restaurant owner in Houston, and Liem, 45, an assembler at an electronics company in Santa Ana, were given early releases Sunday and put on a plane to Bangkok in a conciliatory gesture to the United States.

Tri, Liem and seven Vietnamese were arrested in 1993 for attempting to hold an international conference on development and democracy in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. Authorities accused them of attempting to overthrow the government and put them on trial in August. Tri was sentenced to seven years and Liem to four.

Ireland releases

four IRA prisoners Belfast Ireland freed four IRA prisoners Monday, the latest of 36 to be released early by Dublin as part of its attempts to further the Northern Ireland peace process.

But a Dublin judge ordered two of them - Nessan Quinlivan and Pearse McCauley, sentenced on arms possessions charges in Ireland and also facing murder charges in England - to be held in custody for a week as Britain sought their extradition.

The other two prisoners, Mark Farrell and Gerard Kearns, had been jailed in Ireland for armed robbery.

Protestants in the British-ruled province called the release an attempt to "buy off" the Irish Republican Army to maintain its yearlong cease-fire.

Algerian student held

in string of bombings Paris An Algerian student described by police as a key figure in a wave of bomb attacks in France was formally placed under judicial investigation and ordered held in custody on Monday.

Sources said the charge sheet read to 27-year-old Boualem Bensaid said he was suspected of attempted murder, destruction of property with the use of explosives, illegal use of explosives and criminal conspiracy in a terrorism case.

The charge sheet specifically mentioned a bomb attack which injured 13 people outside a Paris Metro station Oct. 6.

Police suspect Bensaid to have been involved in a failed bomb attack on a high-speed train line near Lyon, and of harbouring unidentified men who set off a bomb in a subway train near the Paris Musee d'Orsay station Oct. 17, wounding 26 people.&lt;